"I'm going inside," I told them.
"Okay, Cher," Bobby said. "We see you upstairs."

 

Clyde started calling me "cher" because my pants were too tight for his liking. Bobby just liked calling people "cher." I'd met both of them in a bar down in the Quarter the first day I arrived. It was called Coops. I stumbled on it looking for Cajun food. I found it. The fried chicken was tops. I ate three pieces with rice and green beans, put five dollars in the jukebox, and drank my way through the music. By the time I had the sense to think about what I was doing, I was high-fiving the bartender, a gruff woman named Marie, and drinking Red Bull and Jagermeister. Everyone sitting around the horseshoe bar was singing along to Waylon and Willie on my dime and we were fast friends. Bobby and Clyde took me in. I left that night knowing that I had somehow snuck on the cool train because I was about to go fucking crazy and I'd come to New Orleans to do it. New Orleans is always looking for a new applicant to fast-track towards insanity. Good and evil live on the surface there, and the Flood had mixed them all up.

 

Bobbie's forty-five, slight and tan. He's Italian, he says, but his family's always been in the Quarter. Bobby's hair is coiffed like a Sicilian Elvis and he wears black shirts with cufflinks that have seahorses in them. His face is wax-like and the crows feet around his eyes are fine and symmetrical. He talks like an Acadian. He's a booking agent for bands, a job that consists of being cool and making sure musicians don't miss appointments. It sounds like a slacker job but it's not. Try getting Fats Domino up for a Good Morning America interview after he's been on a three-day drunk. What the fuck does he care if he doesn't talk to a little girl with a blonde hair helmet?

 

"Fats," Bobby'll say. "This here is the kind of shit that you do do or you don't do, but if you do do you get paid and if you don't do you don't get paid."

 

Bobby claims that simple logic is the best way to deal with musicians but I believe he is successful because he has had his cufflinks blessed by a healing woman in the Marigny they call Big Sue.

 

Clyde is a long, raw-boned young man who went to Tulane. His dad is a lawyer in New Orleans and he grew up in the Garden District, but he's the type of messy sandy-headed Southern boy who was born without fear and failed his parents' expectations early. Now that he's 35, all the bullshit he's been through as a result of his poor decision-making has turned into a measure of toughness and some kind of wisdom. The two of them standing next to one another, Clyde and Bobby, are yin and yang, Heathcliff and Marmaduke.

 

I walked into the club and upstairs. I had a sunburn and it felt good to get into the cool dark shadow of the indoors. I walked over to the bar. A big frat boy in a khaki suit sweated through the armpits was asking the bartender to put more whiskey in his drink. She was beautiful. I'd seen her the night before and it came rushing back. I remembered thinking I had to talk to her, that our fates were somehow inextricably linked. And then being so drunk I forgot.

 

"You want a double?" she asked.
"Yeah. Just put more in there," the kid said.
"I'm not sure what you're asking me. You just asked for a bourbon. You want me to give you a double?"
He was drunk.
"Just give me a little more whiskey. The glass isn't even full."

 

The girl shook her head. I could see her jaw work and then her eyes work and then I saw her make the decision to let it go. She put a tiny bit of whiskey in the glass and the guy took it.

 

"You're kind of cute when you're angry," he said and walked way.

 

He was flirting with her but it was an ugly leering way to do it. She just shook her head in disbelief. She would have a thousand more such interactions in the next week and she knew it. Next weekend she might fight it but not yet. I saw her smile to herself as she turned away, maybe at the recognition that she'd gotten better over the years, at dealing with customers and just in general. The music downstairs started right then and it was too loud for me. She turned to me to take my order. I had this feeling that I needed to talk to her. I ordered a beer and she didn't meet my eyes. I was determined at that moment to connect with her.

 

"You were downstairs last night," I said.
"You were here?" she said. "It gets where I don't even see the faces."
Her voice was direct and undisguised, a quality rare with beautiful women. We had to talk loud to hear over the music, so I leaned towards her.
"It's like ‘Wanna hear my story'?" I said.
It was an awkward try at a joke.
"Yeah," she said, smiled at me like I was funny, and headed down the bar to get a customer.